Nikola the company/stock

[Jaqen Haghar MD]

Oh, I was referring more to the stock price manipulation of the companies I listed due to flagrant market manipulation and insider trading.

The most egregious one is Kodak: their executives purchased millions of shares a day or two before the govt announced their 700M partnership for pharmaceuticals (wtf?). The stock price rose 21x - nothing shady there, right? Of course the bubble popped afterwards with investigations and lawsuits.

Yeah, major nonsense going on there. The lifecycle of companies is interesting though. Once great, Kodak, is all but dead. Almost all individual stocks go to zero in the end. It may take a lifetime or more. Indexes don’t go to zero, because they are always swapping companies in and out.

Nikola isn’t a company really. It’s a stock marketing scheme, with another great salesmen who was at the helm. These have a history of popping up in hot sectors, where investors become emotionally vulnerable to scams.

[formerly_cn]

Investors have major FOMO. Tesla rolled out viable products and now every other alternate energy startup has astronomical value (recently read hyliion? guy who's 28 being a billionaire...at 28 I was doing night calls in some residency).

Anyways interesting time. May be this is .com bubble burst repeat or may be on cusp of a real alternative fuel future...

[CordMcNally]

Anyways interesting time. May be this is .com bubble burst repeat or may be on cusp of a real alternative fuel future...

It doesn't have to be one or the other. My guess is that there's a mix.

[jjandjab]

So I invested in VTIQ/NKLA as I love the idea of hydrogen fuel cells as a potential solution to the power and battery weight issue for long haul trucking. I thought the Badger thing was a sideshow to the real deal. I dug around and watched in the investor day video on YouTube and was impressed, although the infrastructure issue, and its cost, was hanging out there.... The other big players involved, like Fidelity, brought some reassurance. I bought stock and tons of warrants in late April and May. When it shot up to $93 not long after the ticker change, I was concerned, but it actually held its ground for a while in the $60-70. The valuation was clearly way too much, but nothing in the market was making sense in early June anyway... Sold enough stock and warrants to cover my basis and book a nice profit.

But when they released their quarterly results and had nothing to announce other than revenue from solar panels at the founder's house (yikes!) and no substantive future plans, I sold everything over the next few days. The GM deal (which may fall apart) non-withstanding, the news is only getting worse - now sexual assault allegations against Milton - and it's like, wow... I made profit in the 7 figures in my retirement accounts from this thing that might end up being a massive fraud and that is kind of bonkers.

[Hank]

So not a good candidate to buy and hold?

[jjandjab]

So not a good candidate to buy and hold?

Haha, right. I wish it was - I would love to see clean energy heavy duty trucks happen sooner rather than later.

[Nysoz]

Hydrogen unfortunately doesn't make sense until we have essentially unlimited cheap/free energy. Until then it's electric for short hauls. For long hauls, it'll be diesel/hybrids (hyliion) until battery tech improves slightly more.

[xraygoggles]

made profit in the 7 figures in my retirement accounts from this thing that might end up being a massive fraud and that is kind of bonkers.

Good foresight on your part. What did your returns end up being? 5x, 10x?

[jjandjab]

Good foresight on your part. What did your returns end up being? 5x, 10x?

Fortuitous enough to have bought tens of thousands of warrants (not common stock) of VTIQ at an average price of about $10 (lowest was 5.50). Sold my enough to cover our entire initial basis and booked some profit when they hit the mid $30s post merger into NKLA. Sold the rest in the mid $20s after the earnings report and lack of info spooked us big time, along with the founders Twitter silliness. I did add and sell some throughout those four months, but overall I'd say we made maybe 300% profit overall in an investment time frame of 4 months. And we went in big - Honestly, never made an investment like that before and it was portfolio altering for sure...

[Tim]

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.freightwaves.com/news/news-analysis-evidence-mounts-that-nikola-badger-is-roadkill/amp